Can Big Data Improve Medical Diagnoses?

What if software akin to the program that recognizes faces in Facebook photos could detect the cancer in an x-ray?

That’s the idea behind Enlitic, a new startup founded by Jeremy Howard. Howard is a heavy hitter in big data: He’s data strategist for Silicon Valley venture capital powerhouse Khosla Ventures and former president and chief scientist of Kaggle, which hosts big-brain predictive modeling competitions.

Enlitic aims to use advances in machine learning to make medical diagnoses. The company says it has partnered with hospitals and medical imaging companies – Howard won’t say which ones – to mine a host of data sources, including x-rays, lab results, handwritten doctors notes, and claims records. The company is building software algorithms that identify otherwise invisible patterns in these data sources, making for sharper diagnoses.

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